Council Votes 3-2 to Oust Police Chief in Orange

Over the objections of two councilmen who said Police Chief John R. Robertson was being railroaded from his job, the City Council voted early Wednesday to fire him for disobeying orders to keep quiet about a police probe into the suspected theft of city funds and also for investigating his own bosses.

The 3-2 vote to dismiss the chief came after council members holed up in a closed session with top city officials for nearly three hours to review a mountain of documents compiled during a four-month investigation that has cost the city nearly $100,000 in attorney fees.

In a formal statement issued Wednesday evening, City Manager David L. Rudat cited hostile workplace complaints, insubordination and poor judgment as the reasons for Robertson’s termination.

But the chief’s fall was blamed primarily on his decision to have fingerprint checks run on Rudat and council members, while investigating the leak last summer of a sensitive affidavit outlining the Police Department’s investigative findings about the suspected theft of city revenue from recycled trash.

The three council members who voted for his ouster said Wednesday that they felt betrayed.

“He, by his own actions, lost my trust and confidence,” said Councilman Mike Spurgeon, who joined Mayor Joanne Coontz and Councilman Mark Murphy in voting to fire Robertson.

“This is one of the most troubling votes I’ve ever made during 7 1/2 years on the council,” Spurgeon said. “When all is said and done, I cannot tolerate [this behavior] from any employee--especially the chief of police--who contributed to a hostile work environment, disobeyed a direct order, used poor judgment and conducted a secret investigation when he had a major conflict of interest.”

But Councilmen Dan Slater and Michael Alvarez said the “poor judgment” cited was basically courage on the part of Robertson, who they believe was working to root out corruption.

“I am not the least bit offended,” Slater said of the police background checks. “The police chief was doing his job and that is why we can trust him. What we have here is a railroad job. . . . I ask this question: Are we above the law?”

Alvarez said he had hired an outside attorney to review the 2,000 pages of testimony compiled in the city’s investigation of Robertson and was told there was no reason to follow Rudat’s recommendation for termination.

“I spent $2,700 of my own money because I could not trust my own city manager,” Alvarez said. “This whole investigation was intended to take the chief out.”

The vote, which likely set the stage for a wrongful termination suit, was a surprise to no one--least of all Robertson and his lawyer.

“Unfortunately, when politics and law enforcement collide, this is often the outcome,” said Christopher Miller, Robertson’s attorney. “Our objective now is to clear Chief Robertson’s name and return him to a productive law enforcement career. He was wrongly terminated. . . . Short of an acceptable settlement with the city, a lawsuit will be the solution.”

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Robertson, 46, became the first casualty of a continuing scandal over alleged fraud by the city’s trash and recycling companies.

The city’s Police Department last spring began investigating allegations that members of the family of Sam and Alyce Hambarian, who founded the companies that have collected the city’s trash since 1955 and sold recyclable materials from it since 1994, had misappropriated what could amount to millions in city funds.

A search-warrant affidavit detailing the continuing investigation, which is now being handled by the district attorney’s office, was leaked to The Times last summer, and Robertson ordered fingerprint checks to see who had handled Rudat’s copy of the document. The only other copy of the affidavit was in Robertson’s files.

In October, Personnel Director Steven V. Pham announced that Robertson had been placed on paid administrative leave because of complaints that he had created a “hostile workplace.” It later developed that the fingerprint investigation was the primary reason for Robertson’s suspension.

Several residents at the council meeting argued that Rudat should be forced to recuse himself from the decision, because he is under investigation by the district attorney’s office for running afoul of state conflict-of-interest laws.

According to a confidential memo that City Attorney David A. De Berry sent to county prosecutors, Rudat violated state law at least 13 times by continuing to influence decisions about the city’s dealings with the trash and recycling companies, even after his wife received a $13,735 commission for selling the house of a principal suspect in the embezzlement case.

Rudat, who has insisted he has acted ethically, issued a formal statement Wednesday. The chief, he said, showed “poor judgment” by investigating his bosses, disobeyed a direct order that he turn over to the district attorney any investigation involving the city manager or city department heads, and had violated a direct order by briefing one of the councilmen about the trash investigation a month before informing the other council members.

The statement said that Robertson or another police officer could have been the source of the leak and the entire department faced a conflict of interest that Robertson should have recognized.

Rudat quoted from the same confidential hearing officer’s report that supporters of Robertson have used to justify their vote for the former chief’s reinstatement.

Edward Kreins, a former Beverly Hills police chief and city manager hired to hear the case, said in his report that the city would have a hard time sustaining its decision to fire Robertson. But he also said that Robertson erred by failing to turn the case over to the district attorney immediately.

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That was enough for Rudat and the majority of council members to vote to fire Robertson, who was hired as chief in 1992.

“If John had turned this over to the district attorney, none of this might have happened,” Murphy said.

But Slater said other findings of Kreins that exonerated most counts against the chief were ignored or discounted during the closed session.

He also read from an internal memo indicating that the hostile workplace complaints were solicited and orchestrated by Rudat and others--a contention Rudat denied.

Lesley Wright can be reached at (714) 966-7700.